Let me first state off the bat that I am transitioning my email from my RHDC Mac environment (located in the hubbub of the office common area) to the municipally-provided networked PeeCee environment located at my workstation with the organizationally-mandated Microsloth software suite.  You may find that some of my posts over the next period of adaptation have an edge of exasperation, perhaps even anger, to them.  Like this awful way that Outlook quotes a post in its entirety, without any decent way to configure it so I can comment on specific points.  Please bear with me.  Nothing personal  :-)

So, Larry, you don't like modern architecture, eh?  Huh, huh?  What's the matter with you?  I don't have any patience with you close-minded preservationists that just want everything to look the way it has already looked.

Oops, there I go over-reacting.

I started this thread with an observation that design review provides for the lowest common denominator; that it protects us from bad designers.  For bad designers, you just make them make it look like everything else, and you have at least not introduced anything bad into the environment.  Nothing inspired, but nothing bad.  If you want good architecture, hire good architects.  But commissions don't have any control over that.
 
You can have contemporary architecture that responds to its context without being a slavish imitation of past styles.  But many preservationists seem to prefer compliance architecture over contemporary architecture that is sympathetic to its context.  This is what Christopher is alluding to, 'retro design [that] is widely praised by preservation groups,' and suggests that we are going to freeze our cultural evolution in a time capsule.  To me,  good contemporary design for a new structure that is of its own time indicates vitality in an urban environment.  It takes sophisticated design review to be open to this, and I would prefer compliance architecture to what I believe is generally the result when unsophisticated design review bodies take up the issue of contemporary designs: they often start playing "Mr. Potato Head" moving stuff around to make it really obviously fit in with the context.  Modern design by prima donnas that is out of scale, in your face, etc. is to me abhorrent to the human environment, and I would also take compliance architecture over this anyday.  

Here in Raleigh, we have enjoyed sophisticated design review and some good design in recent years, and I'm pretty excited by the results.  We also have had plenty of compliance architecture that has ensured that we haven't trashed the qualities that make our historic districts special places.
__________________________________________________
Dan Becker,  Executive Director      "Conformists die, but
Raleigh Historic                              heretics live on forever"
Districts Commission                             -- Elbert Hubbard

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-----Original Message-----
From:   Lawrence Kestenbaum [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, November 20, 1998 10:19 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Jewish Museum addition

On Mon, 19 Oct 1998, Met History wrote:

[Dan Becker]  <snip>
 
> The retro design is widely praised by preservation groups - I must be a
> killjoy, but I wince every time I pass it, for the lost opportunity it
> represents for an architect (and a mason, and a glazier, and other
> trades) to design something, whether good or bad, that was not just
> "compliance architecture".

[Dan Becker]  <snip>
 
 But the more I read Herbert Muschamp, the less I like him.  He is
positively hostile toward the notion that a building has to fit into its
context.  On the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, he bewails the fact
that it lacks the (dogmatically required) "irony" in its classical
facades.  In effect, he is a caricature of everything I hate about the
"Modern" architecture mindset, in which every building must be a prima
donna that rejects its neighbors and either ignores or ridicules history.

So, what exactly is wrong with the addition to the Jewish Museum?  Met
History (above) calls it "compliance architecture".  Is that such a bad
thing?  Those of us who have labored for years to administer preservation
guidelines in urban historic districts certainly can see "compliance" as a
small victory when the alternative is something intrusive, out of scale,
etc.

[Dan Becker]  <snip>

Just lately, I have noticed that the best "retro" buildings (and
additions) are coming in for very heated criticism, as if they were a
bigger crime than all the crap that goes up without comment.

My interpretation: the architectural orthodoxy, having already taken a big
hit with the widespread abandonment of glass boxes in favor of
"postmodern" buildings, is desperately trying to hold the line against
quality buildings that do not show obeisance to the old dogma.

If there is a critique of the Jewish Museum addition from outside that
orothodoxy, I have yet to hear it articulated.